John Locke and His Contemporaries (International Conference – June 18–20, 2026)

The conference is held under the patronage of the Polish Philosophical Society (Toruń Branch), the Scientific Society in Toruń, and the quarterly Ruch Filozoficzny.

We cordially invite all interested scholars to participate in the international conference John Locke and His Contemporaries, to be held on June 18–20, 2026, at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland.

The groundbreaking character of John Locke’s philosophy and the remarkable breadth of issues he addressed – epistemology, political philosophy, economics, education, and the philosophy of religion – made his thought, from the very beginning, an object of intense analysis, debate, reception, continuation, and critique. Yet this rich body of ideas did not emerge in a vacuum. Locke’s philosophy developed within a distinct social and political context, shaped by networks of thinkers, intellectuals, and politicians active in various milieus: around the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, in Benjamin Furly’s De Lantaarn, within The Royal Society of London, and later among freethinkers such as Anthony Collins and John Toland.

The aim of the conference is to highlight the multifaceted character of Locke’s philosophy, its lasting significance for later philosophical debates, as well as the broader intellectual background formed by thinkers who – although they have attracted far less scholarly attention than Locke himself – deserve to be brought back into focus. These include figures such as Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, Ralph Cudworth, Thomas Browne, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, Richard Burthogge, John Norris, Arthur Collier, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Francis Hutcheson, and many others.

The conference is held under the patronage of the Polish Philosophical Society (Toruń Branch), the Society of Arts and Sciences in Toruń, and the quarterly Ruch Filozoficzny. The conference is also inspired by ongoing work on translations of early modern British philosophers previously unavailable in Polish, now gradually being published in the Classics of Philosophy (Klasyka filozofii) series by the Nicolaus Copernicus University Press:

https://wydawnictwo.umk.pl/serie-wydawnicze/klasyka-filozofii?page=1&line=12&sort=desc

The research is carried out within the project British Philosophy of the 17th and 18th Centuries, funded by the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities (Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki).

Submission guidelines

Abstracts of 300–400 words, please include name, institutional affiliation, and contact details

Language of the conference: English

Selected papers will be considered for publication in a post-conference issue of journal Ruch Filozoficzny.

Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: March 31, 2026

Notification of acceptance: April, 15, 2026

Conference dates: June 18–20, 2026

Contact:

Adam Grzeliński, Institute of Philosophy, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland

e-mail: adamgrz@umk.pl